#Interview – Q&A By Lou with Anne Cater and her #RandomThingsTours as part of Celebrating Blog Tour Organisers @RandomTTours #ReadingCommunity #WritingCommunity #Publishers

Interview/Q&A with Blog Tour Organiser and Blogger –

Anne Cater of Random Things Tours
By Lou at Bookmarks and Stages

As part of the lead up to my blog becoming 5 years old, I am celebrating various people from authors to actors to blog tour organisers. Today I am celebrating Anne Cater, a blog tour organiser of her highly successful and prominent company – Random Things Tours in the form of a Q&A session that gives you all an insight into what a blog tour is, what inspired her to go in this direction and how she goes about doing things, including what an average day looks like for her and the ups and downs. The answers are illuminating and highly interesting. Her route is unusual, and I rather like this, since so is mine. You will also see where you can find Anne Cater and what she offers below.

Anne Cater is the second blog tour organiser who took me onto her list of bloggers, way back when I first started blogging, which I am always grateful for with the review opportunities with great books from various publishers that still come my way. I will say, from a blogger’s point of view for what is required from being on her list, everything runs professionally. smoothly, fairly and she is approachable and it remains a pleasure doing business with her.

Without further ado, let us commence with the Q&A.

What or whom inspired you to become, not only a book blogger, but also a blog tour organiser?I always think of myself as a reviewer/blogger first. That’s how I started and I will never stop reviewing books and blogging about them.My route to becoming a blog tour organiser was a little unusual.Around seven or eight years ago I was at a book event in Nottingham organised by No Exit Press. I’d been reviewing their books for years. The publicity manager approached me and asked me if I’d consider organising a blog tour for them. It wasn’t something that I’d ever considered, but I have a background in Admin and knew that it was something that I’d like to try. That tour was a success and I’ve been organising tours for No Exit ever since.

I’ve worked with Karen Sullivan, the owner of Orenda Books since before Orenda was born, when she worked for another publisher. Karen asked me if I’d like to take over the organisation of the Orenda Blog Tours and I jumped at the chance. I’ve been doing those ever since too.

I didn’t intend to branch out but was asked by Judith O’Reilly to organise a blog tour for her independently published book. I had no idea what to charge and just plucked a figure out of my head. The tour was a success and Judith is now traditionally published.

That’s how it started, and I now organise around 30 – 40 blog tours each month for publishers and also directly for authors.

For those who don’t know, what is a blog tour organiser?

A Blog Tour organiser is exactly what it says on the tin! We organise a tour that focusses on one book (or a series of books). The book will appear on a number of blogs for a set amount of time.

Our job is to ensure that we get the right bloggers for the book. We make sure that the bloggers receive a copy of the book, create a schedule and then send out a media pack. We also share all of the blog tour posts on every tour.

What does a typical day look like for you?

When I first started this job, I already had another job, so blog tour organising was usually done later in the day/evening and at weekends.
In October 2020 I went full time as a blog tour organiser.
My average day begins at around 8am.

Every day I will share the blog tour posts for the day, and any that were posted later the previous evening.
I will go through to find any missing posts and contact the individual blogger with a reminder that they agreed to post on that day.

The remainder of my day is dealing with hundreds of emails. Creating new tours and sending out invitations. Sending out quotations to publishers and authors etc.

I try to finish by 6pm each day.

What are the benefits of going to a blog tour organiser for both author and publisher and for a blogger signing up to be part of a tour?

I think that the big publishers find it really convenient to be able to use blog tour organisers. Publicists have a massive job to do, and a blog tour is just a tiny part of the publicity machine, but for a blog tour organiser, it is their main focus, so they will get a truly dedicated service.

Blog tour organisers know most of their bloggers really well. They know what time of day they will post their slot on the tour, they know their genre preferences and they know if they will read digitally.

An author or publisher can hand over the whole thing to the organiser, without having to worry about getting the bloggers to take part, the organiser will do all of the work.

I think bloggers all have different reasons for signing up for tours. Everyone is different. I know some bloggers feel incentivised to read a book that they may already own by having a particular date to post, that’s certainly one of my main reasons for taking part in a tour as a blogger.

I also know that some bloggers really dislike blog tours, and that’s absolutely fine too. There’s room for everyone

Why should people choose you in-particular?

I do find this question quite difficult! I work really closely with some other organisers, especially Rachel Gilbey, Zoe O Farrell, Tracy Fenton and the Bookouture team. They are all fabulous at what they do.

I’d suggest that authors and publishers should look at tours that I’ve already done, to see if I cover the genre that they want to tour.

Every single tour is treated in the same way by me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a debut self-published author, or an author who has had multiple best-selling novels, they all get the same service.

What are the upsides and downsides of being a blog tour organiser?

The upsides far outweigh the downsides!
What I love best is that I am my own boss. I choose when I work, and who I work with.
Working with books, and being a tiny part of a book’s journey is an honour and a pleasure. It’s something that I always dreamt about, but never ever imagined actually doing.

The positive feedback from authors and publishers is wonderful too. Helping to launch a book is a fabulous thing to be involved with.

I’ve made a lot of friends whilst doing this job, that’s such a bonus too.

Downsides few, but very frustrating!

Occasionally, I am not able to pull together a blog tour, for various reasons and I hate having to let an author know this.

I am fortunate to work on some hugely popular books and having to tell bloggers that the tour is full is one of the things that I hate the most. Some books are so popular that I have to turn away 40 or so bloggers and every time I send that ‘sorry’ email, I am sad.